"...you are enemies of us and of our religion, have desired to deprive us of our Letter of Majesty, have horribly plagued your Protestant subjects... and have tried to force them to adopt your religion against their wills or have had them expelled for this reason... were we to keep these men alive, then we would lose the Letter of Majesty and our religion... for there can be no justice to be gained from or by them..."

Count von Thurn, 5/23/1618

And so two men were thrown out of window. And a revolt broke out. And fire engulfed the empire...

Protestant armies were in high spirits and on the offensive through the summer, Budweiss and Pilsen besieged, with no Imperial troops in sight. Then, bad news, of a Catholic army gathering forces in Wien.

Mansfeld and von Thurn have tried one last time to take their cities, employing skilled gunnery and landmines...

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...but with no luck. In the meantime Imperial forces grew like mushrooms, mercenaries of all sorts trickling to Wien, funded no doubt by Protestant properties seized all across Austria.

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Both Mansfeld and von Thurn have abandoned the sieges, disappearing into Bohemian woods. So many choices, so many strategies to consider, so many potential allies to convince...

The winter was very quiet. Protestants spent the colder months at home, in Prague, partially hoping that overstaffed Catholic armies would starve to death. After all, the countryside around Wien has been pillaged before the first snow.

So when a Catholic cavalry detachment was spotted trying to search for food in Wagram for 2 months, my generals but laughed.

Now, right as Moravia was joining the cause, Catholics have scored a major victory. Ungarrisoned Brunn was captured in April.

Through some sheer luck Protestants were able to get a few EPs, and in July Hungarian troops joined the cause. And just in time, as main Catholic forces were spotted moving towards Ilz - right as the main Protestant army headed west to Pilsen. Oops. The fate of the rebellion rested on my decision - do I fall back to Prague? Do I push on, and hope that the enemy decides to stay and wait for reinforcements? We pressed on, while Hungarians sieged Wien, cutting off Bucquoy's supplies.

So it has become a season of retreats. The main Protestant army (blue arrow) took Pilsen and fell back to Prague. The main Catholic force (red arrow) had to fall back to Wien to ensure its survival, and then it had to double-back to Kremz. And Hungarians (green arrow), of course, had to flee Bucquoy, escaping into Bohemian woods...

For several months my capital existed as Festung Prague, quiet streets, no civilians, and soldiers all around, as Catholics somberly stared us down across the river.

Then, just as snow started to melt, my troops dared a cavalry raid to cut off Bucquoy from his reserves - my recon spotted supply trains on the move up north. And this would have worked quite well... had Catholics not started running for the hills themselves. As a matter of fact, they managed to outrun my Hungarian raiders! They even left me a brand new level 2 depot. Wow. Either hunger proved to be stronger than ironwilled Spaniards, or this is a clever ploy to trick me into pursuit - only to meet Bucquoy's and Bavarian armies at the same time.

So while I'm waiting for the turn to come back, let me look in detail at Protestant units, just like I did at HRE ones here.

As you can see, Dutch Protestant Musketeers and Armored pikemen are pretty much the same as their Catholic counterparts (once you take into account varying experience levels, of course), with one exception: Protestant patrol values are, on average, lower. They are still high when compared to other Ageod games, and I suspect they will go down in future patches. When that happens, do not forget to have some cavalry handy.

Bavarian infantry in general mimics Dutch units, except their pikemen are slightly weaker, in the same way that Spanish Veteran pikemen are superior to Armored pikemen of HRE and regular Spanish pikemen.

Which begs a question, how come pikemen get firepower values as their experience increases?